Dani Garavelli: It’s carrots for the rich, and sticks for the poor

Every so often, as the Queen’s coffin made its slow journey down the Mall, I found myself wondering: is Hilary Mantel watching? Is she taking notes? Is another brilliant essay about to wend its way to the London Review of Books? It was Mantel’s commentary I craved, not Huw Edwards’. I wanted to revel in her observations on monarchy and ritual and the nature of power. I would have hung on her every sparkling word.

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng visit Berkeley Modular, in Northfleet, Kent

Now, she is gone, and there will be no more observations. No more essays. No more words. We will never know what her fierce mind made of the 14-hour queue, the media scrutiny of Meghan or Kwasi Kwarteng’s erratic behaviour in Westminster Abbey.

Like many people, I heard the awful news about Mantel’s death while railing against our new Chancellor’s “mini-budget”. Still in shock, I reflected on how she long ago had the Tories sussed. In a 2017 article for the New Statesman, she predicted the combination of Brexit and austerity would see “job security gone, low pay endemic, justice beyond the average pocket, housing unaffordable, social care broken”. Last year, she proclaimed Boris Johnson “unfit for office,” and said she was ashamed of his government's treatment of refugees.

Yet even Mantel’s gimlet eyes failed to foresee how shamelessly the party's latest leaders would favour the country’s super-wealthy. In that same New Statesman piece, she wrote: “The new Tories will never confess to a social wrecking agenda, or the old Tories to their indifference to interests other than their own.” Last week, though, Kwarteng could not have been more brazen in his poor-bashing, nor more open about whose interests he served as he lifted the cap on bankers’ bonuses, while telling those in low-paid, part-time work the way out of poverty was to earn more money.

Once upon a time, even right-wing politicians felt duty-bound to feign concern about society’s most vulnerable. But Kwarteng could scarcely contain his glee as he announced policy after policy to fatten the wallets of millionaires. Out of the magician's hat came the cancellation of the proposed rise in corporation tax, a doubling of the threshold for stamp duty and - ta-da! - the abolition of the 45 per cent tax rate, while those most affected by the cost of living crisis were given nothing but the middle finger. “You’re not going to like this package if you care more about the poor,” admitted Mark Littlewood, director general of the libertarian think-tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) with which Kwarteng and Liz Truss are aligned. Though the reception on the Tory backbenches was lukewarm, not a single MP crossed the floor.

The mini-budget marked a new approach for a new era, Kwarteng boasted. But it’s more that he and Truss are rushing in where their predecessors might have liked, yet feared, to tread. Having thrown off the shackles of bothering about the optics, they are rekindling the party’s love affair with “trickle-down economics”, and embarking on an ideological experiment that would have made Margaret Thatcher baulk.

Jeremy Corbyn was often mocked as too-far left. All the same, it’s a bold move to turn his slogan on its head and govern for the few, not the many. According to the Resolution Foundation, almost 45 per cent of the tax cuts will go to the UK’s richest five per cent.

Kwarteng insists throwing money at the super-wealthy will turn the “vicious cycle of stagnation into the virtuous cycle of growth”. Labour shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves called it “casino politics”.

Of course, the Tory party has been gambling with our lives ever since David Cameron bet the future of the UK on the EU referendum. With every new leader, the stakes have been raised. So far, the cards do not appear to be falling in the government’s favour. Before Kwarteng’s measures had been unveiled in the Commons, the IFS was warning they would put government debt on an unsustainable path. Hours after, the markets returned their own verdict, and the pound plummeted.

While the Cabinet considers whether to hold or fold, those at the bottom of the economic pile will go on suffering. The introduction of benefits sanctions in 2012 was one of the principal drivers of the expansion in food banks. Now, as those food banks buckle under the weight of demand, Universal Credit claimants will face greater pressure to look for work or have their payments cut. It’s the old carrot and stick policy, but with carrots for the rich, and sticks for the poor.

Kwarteng’s tax breaks throw up an ideological test for the SNP, too. The abolition of the 45 per cent rate and the reduction of the basic rate to 19 per cent will widen the tax gap between Scotland and England. The Tories will say this gap is a disincentive to the well-off to stay here, others that this is an opportunity for the SNP to go its own, less regressive way; to prove Scotland really can be a better, more equitable country. I hope the latter is true, and that Enough is Enough grows from a hashtag and a handful of protests to a full-blown social revolution.

On Friday night, the weeping for Mantel, and on account of Kwarteng, continued on social media. The contrast between these two figures could not be greater: one a skilful dissector of arbitrary and unfettered power; the other in the process of wielding it. I don’t think it is overstatement to suggest Mantel’s loss is more acutely felt because the values she embodied - beauty, craftsmanship, perseverance, integrity - are currently in short supply. Nor that Kwarteng’s moral shoddiness is all the more glaring for having played out in the shadow of her passing.